


you ran with the dead today

by strzyga



Category: Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Gen, brief mention of suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 18:54:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/613115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strzyga/pseuds/strzyga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>steve and tony meet again, after steve's revival. (originally posted to livejournal 13jan2010)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you ran with the dead today

Tony wakes up just long enough for the doctors to confirm his mental state has returned to normal, then sleeps for a week.

Steve spends most of the week sitting at his bedside, alternating between watching him and staring blindly out the window. He's been dead for three, almost four years. It feels as though the world has changed more than it had in the time he'd spent in the ice. A Skrull invasion, Norman Osborn now virtually running the country... So many deaths, so much tragedy. 

He recalls, vaguely, floating for a time outside of time. Hearing voices, endless, using his name to further their own agenda. He thinks he remembers talking to Thor, but Thor did not linger long after Tony's revival. 

There is too much anger and bitterness among his friends.

On the sixth day, Steve leaves for his apartment in New York, to gather his belongings and his thoughts, and presently gets pulled into a week-long excursion to Utah. There have been reports of neo-Nazi activity in several of the smaller towns around the Salt Lake City area, and, well, he's never been able to resist beating up Nazis. It feels good to pull on his costume, to strap his shield to his back. 

Thank God for Fury, and his ability to create identification and official papers for someone who's recently returned from the dead. Steve finds he doesn't really want to think about it.

Tony wakes up the morning of the seventh day.

 

Pepper calls him, four days later. He is walking down a busy street in Salt Lake City, intent on getting a burger and some fries.

"Miss Potts," he says, smiling, "this is a pleasant surprise."

There is a short, awkward moment where she clears her throat, and as his brows start beetling in concern she says, "Steve, uhm," coughs, clears her throat again, "Steve, I think you should come back to Oklahoma."

He blinks. "Why?" he asks, glancing both ways down the street and then, seeing no cars, crossing. 

Her response of, "It's Tony," draws him up short, and he stops in the middle of the sidewalk. A woman in her mid-thirties and her small child almost crash into his back, and she gives him a glare before continuing on. He hardly notices.

"What is it?" he asks tightly, imagining--

"He's awake," she says, stalling his train of thought. "But he's-- I don't know, Steve. He woke up four days ago and he hasn't--" She stops, voice choked.

Steve looks around quickly, hoping for a taxi. No such luck. As he turns and jogs in the direction of the airport, Pepper speaks again. 

"He's spent the past four days just-- sitting. And staring into space." Her voice is barely above a whisper. "He was depressed before he did-- all this, but. It hasn't been this bad since--" _since you died_ , Steve knows she was about to say. "--in a long time."

"I'll be on the next flight down," he says.

 

Pepper meets him at the airport in Anadarko. She is tense and silent, and she sags in his arms when he hugs her, breathing heavily into his shoulder. Her eyes, when she pulls away, are red-rimmed.

The drive to Asgard, and by extension where Tony is staying, is long, made longer by the oppressive silence and seemingly endless fields that roll by them on each side. Pepper's hands are white-knuckled on the steering wheel, and he can see by the tension in her muscles how much effort it is taking her to drive no more than five miles over the speed limit.

Steve is surprised, when they enter the little apartment, to see Donald Blake unfold himself from a small chair in the kitchen, a wan smile on his face. "Steve," he says. 

They shake hands, briefly, and Steve asks, "How is he?"

Blake shrugs. "About the same," he says.

Steve nods and turns to enter the bedroom Tony is staying in, then hesitates, and looks back at the doctor. "Thor--"

"Is... more worried than he-- _either_ of us would like to admit," Blake says. He opens his mouth to say something, seems to think better of it, and then says instead, "Tony _is_ one of Thor's greatest friends. Even now."

For a moment longer Steve lingers, studying him. He looks weary, a little frayed around the edges, but otherwise healthy and without a trace of guile. Eventually Steve nods, and then turns to open the bedroom door.

Tony is, as he expected, simply sitting in his bed and staring vaguely in the direction of the window. Outside, the plains roll for infinity, broken only to the west by the city of Asgard, floating high in the air, a piece of fantastic lore brought to earth. 

Steve really doubts Tony sees a thing.

Despite the solid week Tony had slept, there are bruises beneath his eyes, and he looks gaunt and frail. 

He's not sure how long he stands in the doorway before Tony turns to look at him. For a long moment Tony doesn't react, eyes utterly blank. Then recognition kicks in and he jumps and lets out a noise unsettlingly like an injured animal, eyes flying wide and color rushing from his face. 

Tony, he realizes abruptly, didn't know Steve is alive.

"Oh my god," Tony says, " _Steve._ " He sounds like he's been stabbed in the gut.

Steve wants to smile, to hug him, to tell him how badly he's missed him. What he says is, "What the _hell_ were you thinking?!"

Tony goes utterly white and jerks as though he's been slapped. " _Steve,_ " he says, as though he can't help it, sounding utterly broken. Then he says, "I told you--"

"I'm not talking about registration," Steve interrupts.

He goes silent and seems to fold in on himself. "Then what--"

Suddenly exhausted, Steve slumps against the doorframe, wiping a hand over his face. "I don't care about registration, right now," he says, taking a deep breath. "We can talk about that later."

Tony licks his lips, swallows visibly, and nods. His hand twitches by his side, as though he wants to reach out, to touch. For the moment, Steve remains where he is. 

He says, "Really, though, Tony. What the hell were you thinking, _deleting your brain?_ "

There is a moment in which Tony looks like he's going to attempt to make light of it, to say something like _it seemed like a good idea at the time_ or _i never liked the old one anyway, i wanted to try something new_. Something in Steve's stare makes him stop, though, and eventually Tony's eyes drop to his lap. "Norman Osborn had just taken over S.H.I.E.L.D.," he says, quiet. "I knew he would use it to hunt down superheroes and detain them. I'd already corrupted H.A.M.M.E.R.'s database, but I still had a copy in my brain. If he ever got his hands on it..."

"Okay," Steve says, closing his eyes and letting his head fall to rest on the doorframe. Jesus. "Okay, I can understand that, but Tony, why did you have to delete all of it?" he asks, opening his eyes. "Why couldn't you just delete the database?"

There is relief on Tony's face, mild but blatantly visible. Still, Tony bites his lip and looks out the window. "I had to," he says, and then, "No, Steve--" because he's begun to protest, "--I really did need to."

Steve subsides, mouth a firm line. "Explain."

"Extremis," Tony says, and Steve huffs an irritated breath. He'd always known it was a bad idea. Tony smiles faintly, briefly, and shrugs sheepishly. "Extremis basically turned my entire body into a computer harddrive. The problem with computers is that even though you've deleted something, information about it remains on the harddrive and the whole file is still accessible unless you rewire the whole thing."

God.

"So you had to rewire your entire brain," he says flatly.

"Uh," says Tony, looking vaguely embarrassed. "Pretty much, yeah."

"And it had nothing at all to do with you wanting to die."

There is a brief pause. 

"Not _entirely_ ," Tony hedges.

Oh, for God's sake. "Tony--"

"You were dead, Steve," Tony interrupts. His eyes are very deliberately fixed on the far wall. "Jan is dead, the superhero community hates me, Norman Osborn had every government agency in America hunting me down. Pepper had almost died--" He stops, swallowing thickly. "I was tired," he whispers. 

Steve can't help, now, but move to the bed. He crosses the room in two great strides, pulling Tony into an embrace tight enough to make his bones creak. His chest aches.

"I missed you," Tony says, voice tear-thick, face buried in Steve's shoulder. "God, I missed you." And then he starts to cry, deep, racking sobs that shake his whole body. 

Steve holds him, bent awkwardly over the bed, buries his face in Tony's hair and just breathes. There are rocks in his throat. He says, hoarsely, "I missed you, too."

 

After a while they shift, Steve crawling up on to the bed, sitting upright. Tony shifts to rest against his side, head on his shoulder.

They're comfortable, and they're quiet, and it feels an awful lot like home.

Mid-afternoon, the explosion comes.

 

Tony, who had been dozing lightly, starts awake with a muttered, "What the fuck--"

Steve is already on his feet. There are voices in the kitchen, sounding just as surprised as they are. Dr. Blake, and-- Maria Hill? Sounds like her, anyway. He moves to the window, looking out toward Asgard, and smoke and dust rise in large clouds from the walls. "Dammit," he says.

"What is it?" Tony asks, halfway through changing into regular clothes he must have pulled from the backpack Steve notices next to the bed.

"Someone's attacking Asgard," he says, and then stops.

Tony is frozen behind him. "Osborn," he breathes, and flies into motion. "Shit, I don't even have armor, if he finds out I'm here--"

From the kitchen he hears Hill tell Blake, "It's Osborn. He's here for Stark."

"If he was here for Stark, he'd be here. He's attacking Asgard," Blake says. He can hear them moving around.

The TV is on downstairs. Steve can just pick it up over the sound of Maria commenting on how crazy Osborn is. He cocks his head, listening carefully. It's a news report. CNN is already reporting _\--from the site of Broxton, Oklahoma, where the Norse city of Asgard now hovers_ \--

Tony and Steve enter the kitchen as Blake is saying, "--ake Tony Stark and _get out of here_. As far away as possib--"

"That's not necessary," Steve says.

Blake and Hill whirl around and stare at them, clearly surprised. Then Blake says, "Okay," and grabs his walking stick. "I have to go."

"You're going to need a bigger stick," Hill says, cocking her hips. Does she not know about Donald Blake and Thor? Steve can't remember.

It's not important.

Blake is at the door before he turns and asks, "Where will you be going?"

"There's an Avengers hideout just outside of Lawton," Steve says, thinking quickly. Behind him Tony is shoving things into bags, expression tense. He's obviously thinking about his armor, and how they're going to fight Osborn without it.

"I think I can get you that far," Blake is saying, and Steve forces his attention to stop wandering. "It's not too far away, I should be able to make it in time."

"Good," he says, and turns to help Tony with the bags. "Tony, is there any way for you to hack into Osborn's armor?"

Tony stills, staring at him like he's just proven string theory. "Oh my god," he says, "why didn't I think of that?"

Steve grins. "Think about it on the way," he advises, and then they're leaving and Blake takes his walking stick in two hands. When it meets the ground there is an enormous boom and a flash of lightning so bright Steve has to blink tears from his eyes. The smell of ozone is thick in his nostrils.

"It is good to see you, my friend," Thor says, and then they're in the air.

**Author's Note:**

> i figured it was about time i finish moving all my old fic from lj to this site lmao, to keep everything more organized.
> 
> this was posted shortly after the release of the first issue of siege. at the time, it contained spoilers for siege #1 and whichever issue of invincible iron man had been released prior to my writing this, but seeing as that was two years ago, i didn't feel the need to warn for spoilers in the summary. 
> 
> title stolen from the editors' "you don't know love"


End file.
